Search

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad al-Madīnī al-Balawī was an Egyptian historian and minor traditionist, possibly of Imāmī affiliation. His dates are unknown. Citing internal evidence in Sīrat Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn, the text for which al-Balawī is best known, Shayyal argues plausibly that he flourished in the late fourth/tenth century, suggesting that he wrote for a member of the short-lived Ikhshīdid dynasty of Egypt (r. 323–58/935–69). The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 385/995) is the chief source of later biographical entries (1/2:681); the Tanqīḥ al-maqāl of al-Mamāqānī (d. 1933) p…

ʿAskar Mukram (lit., Mukram’s camp) was a town in Khūzistān (in present-day southwestern Iran, on the head of the Persian Gulf), north of Ahwāz, approximately at the junction of the Dujayl River (today the Kārūn) and the Masruqān Canal (the present-day Āb-i Gargar). The site, probably a late first/seventh-century cantonment, stood adjacent to a Sāsānid town, Rustam Kuwādh, which was destroyed during the Arab/Muslim conquests. Questions surround ʿAskar Mukram’s earliest history. Two conflicting accounts in al-Balādhurī (382–3) associate the eponym Mukram with …